Broadband stimulus exempted from 'buy American'

29.06.2009
The U.S. government has exempted broadband builders who want federal grants from a "buy American" provision of the US$787 billion stimulus package passed in February.

Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, designed to jump-start the U.S. economy with spending on various domestic projects, all the iron, steel and manufactured goods used in a public building or public works project need to be produced in the U.S. That includes the $4.7 billion allocated to the Broadband Telecommunications Opportunity Program (BTOP) for building and expanding high-speed communications networks.

On Friday, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which will provide the grants for BTOP, exempted service providers from that provision for most types of equipment that go into a broadband network. This includes switching, routing, transport and access equipment, as well as customer premises equipment such as modems and set-top boxes. Service providers are also exempt from the rule when choosing billing and operations systems.

"It would be difficult, if not impossible, for a BTOP applicant to have certain knowledge of the manufacturing origins of each component of a broadband network, and the requirement to do so would be so overwhelmingly burdensome as to deter participation in the program," wrote Anna Gomez, acting assistant secretary for communications and information, in a Commerce Department notice issued Friday.

Fiber-optic cables, coaxial cables, cell towers and other facilities that are produced in the U.S. in sufficient quantities are not exempted from the "buy American" provision, Gomez noted.

Like most of the electronics industry, the broadband equipment market is spread around the world among a wide range of brand-name vendors and contract manufacturers. Some parts of the business are dominated by vendors outside the U.S.